Castle Crottorf: A Moated Castle in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page16 sections
History
Castle Crottorf is a historic moated castle in Germany, near Friesenhagen, whose present form grew from a medieval fortified complex into a Renaissance and Baroque residence. It stands in the Wisser valley, two kilometres west of Friesenhagen in the Wildenburger Land of northeastern Rhineland-Palatinate, close to the border with North Rhine-Westphalia. The site occupies the foundations of a castle first mentioned in the first half of the fourteenth century.
Medieval origins and the Selbach estate
The name Crottorf appears in 1261 in connection with Ludwig the Black of Crottorf, a vassal of the noble lords of Wildenburg. The castle itself is first mentioned in 1326, when it was held as a fief of the counts of Sayn by the brothers Johann and Arnold of Selbach. Their father, the knight Eberhard von Selbach, appears in records from 1288.
The Selbach family later released its residence from feudal dependence, converting it into allodial property, or land held outright rather than as a feudal grant. After Hermann von Wildenburg died without children in 1418, inheritance passed through his sister Jutta and her son Godhard. The Selbach family defended its claim against the counts of Sayn in an eighteen-year dispute over the lordship of Wildenburg.
In 1424, Godhard’s sons Johann and Ludwig married their sister Katharina to Christian von Selbach zu Crottorf and gave Crottorf and its associated lands to her as a dowry. This marriage maintained the Selbach family’s connection with the estate. Around the middle of the sixteenth century, Christian’s grandson Johann von Selbach, marshal of the Duchy of Berg, transformed the earlier residence into a substantial moated castle. The earlier complex probably consisted of a fortified house of two or three storeys surrounded by water.
Renaissance castle and Hatzfeld inheritance
Johann’s daughter Katharina, later heiress of Crottorf, married Wilhelm von Hatzfeld zu Wildenburg in 1559. Their marriage established the Hatzfeld-Wildenburg-Crottorf line, and Wilhelm inherited the estate after his father-in-law died in 1563. The Hatzfelds were a major German noble house whose branches held Crottorf from the sixteenth century onward.
Wilhelm’s son Sebastian I carried out extensive renovations and embellishments in two phases, from 1605 to 1607 and from 1619 to 1622. He had already given the enceinte, or enclosing fortification, its present form in the late sixteenth century by adding a protected wall-walk above a round-arched frieze. The wall-walk provided a covered passage along the top of the defensive wall.
The fortifications did not protect the estate from the Thirty Years’ War, the European conflict fought from 1618 to 1648. Swedish troops occupied and plundered Crottorf in 1631. During the 1630s, members of the Crottorf branch of the Hatzfeld family became imperial counts, a rank within the former Holy Roman Empire. In 1748, the family received the higher title of imperial prince.
Baroque transformation
After Sebastian I died, ownership passed first to his son Melchior and then to his younger brother Hermann von Hatzfeld. Hermann lived at Haltenbergstetten in Franconia, so Crottorf did not function as a residence until 1665. From the middle of the 1660s, Hermann remodelled and enlarged the castle in the Baroque style. His son Sebastian II completed the work, adding two round corner towers to the north wing. With these additions, all four corners of the main building had towers, matching the Baroque preference for symmetry.
Hermann commissioned the Italian stucco artist Giovanni Domenico Rosso to decorate several rooms, including the former hunting room, which later became a vestibule. Between 1720 and 1722, the main building was modernized, and Giuseppe Artario created a Régence-style stucco ceiling for the great ballroom. The style belongs to the French transition between the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV.
The gate tower, constructed in 1684 and 1685, was the final new building of the Baroque expansion. Its roof was restored after a fire in 1909. Crottorf ceased to be the family’s principal residence after Lothar Franz von Hatzfeld died in 1722, because his heir Franz von Hatzfeld lived mainly at Trachenberg in Lower Silesia. Anna-Elisabeth von Kesselstadt, the widow of Sebastian II, remained at Crottorf until 1726, after which the castle was used only occasionally. The Walloon painter Renier Roidkin depicted it around 1725.
Inheritance and modern history
The Crottorf branch of the Hatzfeld family, known from the seventeenth century as Hatzfeld-Gleichen-Trachenburg, ended in the male line with the death of Prince Friedrich Cajetan in 1794. The estate was divided between the Hatzfeld-Werther-Schönstein and Hatzfeld-Wildenburg-Weisweiler families. Around 1830, it became the sole property of the latter line, which received princely status about forty years later.
Hermann von Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg and his wife Maria von Stumm commissioned a major renovation carried out from 1923 to 1927. After their son Franz-Hermann, Prince of Hatzfeld-Wildenburg, died without a male heir in 1941, the estate passed in 1954 to his sister Ursula. In 1969, she left it to her adopted nephew Hermann Count Hatzfeldt-Wildenburg-Dönhoff, whose family remains associated with the property.
In 1990, Marion Countess Dönhoff commissioned an abstract memorial by Alexander Liberman for people executed after the 20 July 1944 attempt to kill Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime. Placed on the eastern terrace, it commemorates Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, Heinrich von Lehndorff, Kurt von Plettenberg, and Nikolaus von Üxküll. Marion Dönhoff died at Crottorf on 11 March 2002. The castle is recognized as a cultural monument.
Remains
Crottorf is a two-part water-castle complex arranged on two separate islands. The main castle and the southwest-facing outer ward are linked by a multi-arched bridge across an inner moat. The whole castle area lies within a pond measuring approximately 176 by 120 metres. A ring wall with small defensive openings encloses the site, while its northeast and southwest corners project in bastion-like forms. A round-arched frieze marks the level of the surrounding covered wall-walk.
Approach and outer ward
Gate tower and bridges
A 45-metre-long stone bridge with seven arches crosses the southern part of the pond toward the massive gate building. Since the bridge does not span the complete waterway, its final section is crossed by a lowered wooden drawbridge. The square gate tower has three storeys and an eight-sided, kinked roof. A closed lantern containing a clock crowns the roof.
Iron anchors on the exterior give the date 1685, while additional anchors form the initials of Sebastian, Count of Hatzfeld and of Gleichen, Lord of Wildenburg, identifying him as the builder. A Hatzfeld coat of arms is set above the round-arched entrance, which has a stone-block frame and a recess for the drawbridge. A second stone arch bridge crosses the inner moat to the round-arched entrance of the outer ward.
Outer-ward buildings
The outer ward is U-shaped and open toward the main castle. Its entrance leads into a single-storey south wing, while the east and west wings rise to two storeys and have timber-framed upper floors. The southern corners are marked by two low defensive round towers with almost conical, eight-sided roofs. Their weather vanes carry the dates 1671 and 1678. The outer ward now contains residences and garages.
The first floor of the east wing dates from the fifteenth century. It has two timber-framed oriels from around 1675, one of which carries an eighteenth-century sundial. A low wall bounds the northern side of the outer-ward courtyard. South of the pond, a three-wing service building was constructed between 1712 and 1714 and demolished during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Main castle
Fortifications and corner towers
The three-winged main castle is based on a sixteenth-century structure. Its two storeys of rubble masonry rise above a high basement containing loopholes. Mansard roofs, dating from the 1920s, cover the building. Four massive corner towers, each three storeys high and approximately 8.30 metres in diameter, define the main castle’s corners.
Each tower is topped by a polygonal, slate-covered Welsch hood, a bulbous or curved tower roof, with a closed eight-sided lantern. These roofs date from the end of the eighteenth century. The round-arched frieze separates the two levels of the southern towers and continues along the exterior of the south wing, forming a strong horizontal division on the facade.
Courtyard and interior features
The courtyard side of the south wing has a Renaissance-style arcade with flat arches. The round-arched portal of the main castle received its present form during the renovation of the 1920s and was modelled on the outer-ward gate. A stone plaque beside the passage commemorates the work, and the principal entrance opposite it was created at the same time.
Rectangular paired windows with basalt and sandstone surrounds line the courtyard facades of all three wings. The northeast wing has a round-arched entrance with a broad sandstone frame, reached by a staircase built in 1927. The northeast and south wings are each one room deep, while the northwest wing is two rooms deep. Its first-floor ballroom has four windows facing the courtyard and connects the other two wings.
Chapel and furnishings
One of the ballroom’s four doors opens through the west wall into the castle chapel. The chapel has a three-sided apse projecting beyond the exterior facade. Its furnishings include a carved triptych altar from the first half of the sixteenth century and a bronze baptismal font dated 1620.
Grounds and associated features
Outside the moat, a grass terrace follows the former defensive bank on all four sides. The only surviving element of the former Baroque parterre garden is a two-storey pavilion tower on the eastern long side. The grounds also contain sculptures, including abstract works, statues of Greek gods, oversized furniture forms, and an image of a running hare mounted against the rocky garden wall.
Memorial terrace
The memorial to the victims of the 20 July 1944 assassination plot stands on the eastern grass terrace. Alexander Liberman’s abstract sculpture incorporates the names of the six resistance figures commemorated there: Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, Heinrich von Lehndorff, Kurt von Plettenberg, and Nikolaus von Üxküll.
Chapel of the Holy Cross
Beyond the garden on the eastern side of Crottorf stands the octagonal Chapel of the Holy Cross, dated 1701. It is reached across a small bridge over the Wisser, with paths leading through a wooded, rocky hill.
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